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A practical guide to using the climate law to get cheaper solar panels, heat pumps, and more.
Today marks the one year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest investment in tackling climate change the United States has ever made. The law consists of dozens of subsidies to help individuals, households, and businesses adopt clean energy technologies. Many of these solutions will also help people save money on their energy bills, reduce pollution, and improve their resilience to disasters.
But understanding how much funding is available for what, and how to get it, can be pretty confusing. Many Americans are not even aware that these programs exist. A poll conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland in late July found that about 66% of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the law’s incentives for installing rooftop solar panels, and 77% have heard little or nothing about subsidies for heat pumps. This tracks similar polling that Heatmap conducted last winter, suggesting not much has changed since then.
Below is Heatmap’s guide to the IRA’s incentives for cutting your carbon footprint at home. If you haven’t heard much about how the IRA can help you decarbonize your life, this guide is for you. If you have heard about the available subsidies, but aren’t sure how much they are worth or where to begin, I’ll walk you through it. (And if you’re looking for information about the electric vehicle tax credit, my colleague at Heatmap Robinson Meyer has you covered with this buyer’s guide.)
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There’s funding for almost every solution you can think of to make your home more energy efficient and reduce your fossil fuel use, whether you want to install solar panels, insulate your attic, replace your windows, or buy electric appliances. If you need new wiring or an electrical panel upgrade before you can get heat pumps or solar panels, there’s some money available for that, too.
The IRA created two types of incentives for home energy efficiency improvements: Unlimited tax credits that will lower the amount you owe when you file your taxes, and $8.8 billion in rebates that function as up-front discounts or post-installation refunds on equipment and services.
The tax credits are available now, but the rebates are not. The latter will be administered by states, which must apply for funding and create programs before the money can go out. The Biden administration began accepting applications at the end of July and expects states to begin rolling out their programs later this year or early next.
The home tax credits are available to everyone that owes taxes. The rebates, however, will have income restrictions (more on this later).
“The Inflation Reduction Act is not a limited time offer,” according to Ari Matusiak, the CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Rewiring America. The rebate programs will only be available until the money runs out, but, again, none of them have started yet. Meanwhile, there’s no limit on how many people can claim the tax credits, and they’ll be available for at least the next decade. That means you don’t need to rush and replace your hot water heater if you have one that works fine. But when it does break down, you’ll have help paying for a replacement.
You might want to hold off on buying new appliances or getting insulation — basically any improvements inside your house. There are tax credits available for a lot of this stuff right now, but you’ll likely be able to stack them with rebates in the future.
However, if you’re thinking of installing solar panels on your roof or getting a backup battery system, there’s no need to wait. The rebates will not cover those technologies.
A few other caveats: There’s a good chance your state, city, or utility already offers rebates or other incentives for many of these solutions. Check with your state’s energy office or your utility to find out what’s available. Also, it can take months to get quotes and line up contractors to get this kind of work done. If you want to be ready when the rebates hit, it’s probably a good idea to do some of the legwork now.
If you do nothing else this year, consider getting a professional home energy audit. This will cost several hundred dollars, depending on where you live, but you’ll be able to get 30% off or up to $150 back under the IRA’s home improvement tax credit. Doing an audit will help you figure out which solutions will give you the biggest bang for your buck, and how to prioritize them once more funding becomes available. The auditor might even be able to explain all of the existing local rebate programs you’re eligible for.
The Internal Revenue Service will allow you to work with any home energy auditor until the end of this year, but beginning in 2024, you must hire an auditor with specific qualifications in order to claim the credit.
Let’s start with what’s inside your home. In addition to an energy audit, the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit offers consumers 30% off the cost (after any other subsidies, and excluding labor) of Energy Star-rated windows and doors, insulation, and air sealing.
There’s a maximum amount you can claim for each type of equipment each year:
$600 for windows
$500 for doors
$1,200 for air sealing and insulation
The Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit also covers heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and electrical panel upgrades, including the cost of installation for those systems. You can get:
$2,000 for heat pumps
$600 for a new electrical panel
Yes, homeowners can only claim up to $3,200 per year under this program until 2032.
Also, one downside to the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit is that it does not carry over. If you spend enough on efficiency to qualify for the full $3,200 in a given year, but you only owe the federal government $2,000 for the year, your bill will go to zero and you will miss out on the remaining $1,200 credit. So it could be worth your while to spread the work out.
The other big consumer-oriented tax credit, the Residential Clean Energy Credit, offers homeowners 30% off the cost of solar panels and solar water heaters. It also covers battery systems, which store energy from the grid or from your solar panels that you can use when there’s a blackout, or sell back to your utility when the grid needs more power.
The subsidy has no limits, so if you spend $35,000 on solar panels and battery storage, including labor, you’ll be eligible for the full 30% refund, or $10,500. The credit can also be rolled over, so if your tax liability that year is only $5,000, you’ll be able to claim more of it the following year, and continue doing so until you’ve received the full value.
Geothermal heating systems are also covered under this credit. (Geothermal heat pumps work similarly to regular heat pumps, but they use the ground as a source and sink for heat, rather than the ambient air.)
Here’s what we know right now. The IRA funded two rebate programs. One, known as the Home Energy Performance-Based Whole House Rebates, will provide discounts to homeowners and landlords based on the amount of energy a home upgrade is predicted to save.
Congress did not specify which energy-saving measures qualify — that’s something state energy offices will decide when they design their programs. But it did cap the total amount each household could receive, based on income. For example, if your household earns under 80% of the area median income, and you make improvements that cut your energy use by 35%, you’ll be eligible for up to $8,000. If your household earns more than that, you can get up to $4,000.
There’s also the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program, which will provide discounts on specific electric appliances like heat pumps, an induction stove, and an electric clothes dryer, as well as a new electrical panel and wiring. Individual households can get up to $14,000 in discounts under this program, although there are caps on how much is available for each piece of equipment. This money will only be available to low- and moderate-income households, or those earning under 150% of the area median income.
Renters with a household income below 150% of the area median income qualify for rebates on appliances that they should be able to install without permission from their landlords, and that they can take with them if they move. For example, portable appliances like tabletop induction burners, clothes dryers, and window-unit heat pumps are all eligible for rebates.
It’s also worth noting that there is a lot of funding available for multifamily building owners. If you have a good relationship with your landlord, you might want to talk to them about the opportunity to make lasting investments in their property. Under the performance-based rebates program, apartment building owners can get up to $400,000 for energy efficiency projects.
For the most part, yes. But the calculus gets tricky when it comes to heat pumps.
Experts generally agree that no matter where you live, switching from an oil or propane-burning heating system or electric resistance heaters to heat pumps will lower your energy bills. Not so if you’re switching over from natural gas.
Electric heat pumps are three to four times more efficient than natural gas heating systems, but electricity is so much more expensive than gas in some parts of the country that switching from gas to a heat pump can increase your overall bills a bit. Especially if you also electrify your water heater, stove, and clothes dryer.
That being said, Rewiring America estimates that switching from gas to a heat pump will lower bills for about 60% of households. Many utilities offer tools that will help you calculate your bills if you make the switch.
The good news is that all the measures I’ve discussed in this article are expected to cut carbon emissions and pollution, even if most of your region’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels. For some, that might be worth the monthly premium.
Tax Credit #1 offers 30% off the cost of energy audits, windows, doors, insulation, air sealing, heat pumps, electrical panels, with a $3200-per-year allowance and individual item limits.
Tax Credit #2 offers 30% off the cost of solar panels, solar water heaters, batteries, and geothermal heating systems.
Rebate Program #1 will offer discounts on whole-home efficiency upgrades depending on how much they reduce your energy use, with an $8,000 cap for lower-income families and a $4,000 cap for everyone else.
Rebate Program #2 is only for low- and moderate- income households, and will offer discounts on specific electric appliances, with a $14,000 cap.
Read more about the Inflation Reduction Act:
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The administration can’t have it both ways on the Clean Air Act.
The Trump administration filed lawsuits this week against four states that are pursuing compensation from oil and gas companies for climate change-related damages. But Trump’s separate aim to revoke the government’s “endangerment finding,” the conclusion that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and should therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act, could directly undercut the legal basis for the suits.
In each of the cases, the Trump administration is arguing that the Clean Air Act preempts the states’ actions. But if the Environmental Protection Agency rules that the Clean Air Act does not, in fact, require the federal regulation of greenhouse gases, that argument could fall apart.
Two of the lawsuits target Vermont and New York for their new “climate superfund” laws that require the companies responsible for the greatest amount of emissions over the last three decades to pay into a fund supporting adaptation and disaster response. The Department of Justice is also suing Hawaii and Michigan to block them from suing fossil fuel companies for damages for climate change-related harms. Neither state had actually filed such a lawsuit yet, although both had expressed interest in doing so. (Hawaii went ahead and filed its suit on Thursday night.)
“I just want to start by saying that these lawsuits by the government are totally unprecedented,” Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor of Law at Michigan State University, told me when we hopped on the phone. To her knowledge, never before has the federal government tried to preemptively stop a state from filing a liability case against companies.
In an executive order in early April, Trump had directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws and actions that “may be unconstitutional” or “preempted by federal law.” The order singled out lawsuits against oil companies as well as climate superfund laws, calling both a form of “extortion” and a “threat to economic and national security.”
Nevermind that climate change is a major threat to economic and national security, and states have filed these lawsuits and created these laws because they are scrambling to find ways to pay to address the unprecedented damages brought by the increasing severity of wildfires and floods.
Even before Trump took office, Rothschild said, the federal government had warned states that they were going to need to take more responsibility for preparing for and responding to increasing natural disasters. “[States] do not have the resources alone to address this problem,” said Rothschild. “These companies have engaged in an activity that causes external harms that they’ve not taken into account as part of their business practices, they’'re imposing all the costs of those harms on states and citizens, and they should be liable to help us deal with the resulting problems. That’s a very normal activity for tort suits.”
Dozens of states have filed similar lawsuits seeking damages from oil companies. (A Justice Department press release did not say why it was singling out states that had not taken any legal action yet rather than targeting those that had.) Many of these lawsuits have been stuck in a holding pattern for years, though. “Climate superfund” laws are a new legal strategy, modeled on the federal superfund program, that some states are testing to get oil companies to pay up.
The DOJ’s lawsuits claim that states cannot fine oil companies for their emissions because that authority lies with the federal government under the Clean Air Act. That argument is underpinned by the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding, which stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are a pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act, and therefore the EPA must determine whether these emissions pose a threat to public health. The court said that if the agency finds there is enough scientific evidence to say greenhouse gases are harmful, it must develop regulations to rein them in. EPA officially made this finding in 2009.
This was a big headache for Trump during his first term. He wasn’t allowed to simply repeal Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas rules — by law, he had to replace them. If he’s able to reverse the endangerment finding, however, he could undo climate protection rules and that would be that.
At the same time, he’d make oil companies much more vulnerable. “There is great concern that reversing the finding would open the door to a lot more nuisance lawsuits against all types of energy companies,” Jeff Holmstead, a partner with Bracewell, a lobbying firm, told E&E News. “It would eliminate one of the best arguments that oil companies have used to get lawsuits against them dismissed,” he added.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin will face an uphill battle in reversing the finding, as there is a mountain of scientific evidence that greenhouse gases cause dangerous climate change. But Zeldin may instead try to argue that the EPA did not consider the cost of addressing these emissions when it made the initial finding — and that the costs of reining them in outweigh the costs of emitting freely.
Legal experts are skeptical this argument will go anywhere, either. In 2012, the D.C. Circuit Court found that the EPA’s endangerment finding should be based on science, not economics. Cost-benefit analyses and other policy considerations are relevant if the EPA finds that greenhouse gases do, in fact, pose a threat, but they “do not inform the ‘scientific judgment’” that the law requires the EPA to make, the judge ruled. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn “Chevron deference,” a decades-long precedent that gave agencies broad authority to interpret their statutory mandates, could also hurt Zeldin’s case.
Rothschild, for her part, is confident that states’ superfund laws and tort suits are defensible regardless of what happens to the endangerment finding. These actions have nothing to do with the Clean Air Act, she argued, because they are not an attempt to regulate emissions. “They're trying to impose liability for local, environmental, and public health harms from past activities,” she said.
One thing is for certain: Between states’ lawsuits suing oil companies, oil companies’ countersuits, the DOJ’s new lawsuits against states, and probably future suits against any actions the Trump administration takes on endangerment, there’s going to be a whole lot of new case law about greenhouse gases over the next four years.
The fundamentals are the same — it’s the tone that’s changed.
At some point in the past month, the hydrogen fuel cell developer Plug Power updated its website. Beneath a carousel explaining the hydrogen ecosystem and solutions for transporting fuel, the company’s home page now contains a section titled “Hydrogen at Work.”
“Hydrogen is key to energy independence, providing clean, reliable power while reducing reliance on imported fuels,” the text in this new box reads. “Plug’s hydrogen and fuel cell solutions strengthen the energy grid and enhance national security, positioning the U.S. as a leader in the global energy transition.”
It is fairly ordinary website copy, but to a keen reader, the text jumps out as an obvious Trump 2.0 tell. Plug Power — like many green economy companies — has pivoted to meet the political and economic moment, where “energy independence” and “energy dominance” are in and “climate” and “sustainability” are out.
“I am actually shocked every time I look at the website of a climate tech company that still uses the language from 12 months ago, from four months ago — that doesn’t do them any good,” Peter Atanasoff, the managing director and vice president of Scratch Media and Marketing, which helps B2B technology companies and climate tech businesses achieve growth and recognition, told me.
The shift in language is more significant than just brands chasing the latest buzzwords.
The first Trump administration saw broad-based pushback from the business community against Trump’s more inflammatory positions, especially by consumer-facing brands that played to the pussy hat-wearing, brunch-and-protest attitudes of the time. The CEOs of Facebook (now Meta), Nike, and Google issued statements of disappointment when the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk even dropped out of the president’s business council over the decision. It was, needless to say, a very different time.
During Trump’s second term, he promised “retribution.” Many of the more moderate voices from his first administration are long gone, and there’s a palpable fear among nonprofits and businesses of drawing the wrong kind of attention from Washington, losing grant funding for saying the wrong thing. “The real trigger” for resulting differences in branding between the first and second Trump administrations has been “the change of tone and change of economic policy,” Atanasoff told me. “It is explicit opposition to any of these technologies."
The administration has launched an all-out assault not just on climate policy, but also on the very language of the energy transition. In a February memo obtained by E&E News, the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed 34 words to be erased from official documentation, including “global warming,” “carbon footprint,” “net zero,” and even “green.” As I’ve covered for Heatmap, farmers applying for Department of Agriculture grants have been encouraged to resubmit proposals with climate-focused language removed and “refocus … on expanding American energy production.” And at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists have quickly learned to pivot to talking about “air pollution” rather than emissions, contending with a banned-words list of their own.
Lobbyists and clean energy companies that want to be in the administration’s good graces have adapted, as well. That has changed the tenor of green business at large. Alexander Bryden, who runs the Washington, D.C. office of Browning Environmental Communications, told me over email that tweaking brand language is “typical after any change of administration, particularly when there are significant shifts in policy.” But especially for organizations in the public eye, “it’s more important than ever to highlight the historic and potential economic benefits of environmental solutions — and show how they are supported by, and benefit, people across the political spectrum.”
The actual fundamentals of green business haven’t changed, though. On the contrary, in the first quarter of 2025, venture capitalists and private equity firms invested more than $5 billion in climate tech startups in the U.S., a 65% increase from the same period a year earlier, according to PitchBook data. While there are certainly obstacles like supply chain uncertainty and tariffs to contend with, especially for clean energy manufacturing, on the whole “it’s still a great time to start a climate startup,” Tommy Leep, the founder of the software-focused venture firm Jetstream, told my colleague Katie Brigham last November. His caveat? “Just don’t call it a climate startup.”
Roger Ballentine, the president of the management consulting service Green Strategies and the chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Bill Clinton, explained this thinking to me. “It’s what I refer to as climate capitalism, which is the realization that by incorporating climate change and its risks and opportunities into your business strategy, you’re actually going to be a more successful, more profitable, and more competitive company,” he said. Even with the recent economic turbulence, “That hasn’t changed. That’s not going to change.”
Where you do see adjustments, however, is “around the edges,” per Ballentine. Companies are attempting to match the frequency of the administration and, in turn, the broader policy ecosystem — a frequency that tends to be aggressive, assertive, and heavy on words like “dominance” and “security.” It might also take the form of decreasing the volume at which companies had previously shouted their climate bona fides.
Anya Nelson, the senior vice president of public relations at Scratch M+M, said her team has also advised touting “American-made production” in brand messaging, and reframing copy to focus on “the positive impacts and immediate business benefits” of the companies, rather than more idealistic messaging about climate goals that may have had stronger resonance during the Biden administration.
At this point, you may have noticed that I haven’t quoted any corporate brand officers. That’s not because I didn’t try to talk to any. (Even Plug Power, my example at the beginning of this story, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the change in their messaging.) Though the sudden prevalence of terms like “energy dominance” becomes conspicuous once you start to look for them, no one wants to draw the wrong kind of attention from the administration. It’s part of a greater trend of clamming up that my colleagues and I have experienced across sectors in our reporting, and at a time when even the word “green” can give you a black mark, I can’t say I don’t understand.
Ballentine, the Green Strategies president, dismissed reading too much into how language itself changes under President Trump. “If yesterday a new technology company was touting itself as a climate solution, and now it’s touting itself as a way to achieve energy dominance — I don’t care,” he said.
His thinking was more pragmatic. “Good business remains good business,” Ballentine went on. “Around the edges, will things change? Yes. General belt tightening? Yes. Fundamental change of direction? No.”
It might sound like branding agencies are encouraging companies to “play along” with the administration, but Nelson of Scratch M+M stressed that wasn’t what she was trying to say. At the end of the day, “your end goal is to be a viable company, right?” she said. “To be a thriving company that is going to change the world, first and foremost, you need to make sure you don’t go out of business.” The message might be more accurately summarized as “read the room.”
A report from Heatmap’s San Francisco Climate Week event with Tom Steyer.
Last Thursday at San Francisco Climate Week, Heatmap hosted an event with a lineup of industry leaders and experts to discuss the most promising up-and-coming climate tech innovations amidst a backdrop of tariff and tax credit uncertainty.
Guests at Heatmap's event, Climate Tech's Next Winners.Sean Vranizan
First up, Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer sat down with Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and co-founder of Galvanize Climate Solutions, to explore the most promising climate technologies to scale. “No one's going to adopt new technologies to be nice,” Steyer noted. “They're gonna adopt new technologies because they're better, because they're a better deal, because they're cheaper or in some ways solve a pain point for the customer.” Steyer went on to emphasize that there is at least one “transformational and disruptive” idea for every six verticals in the climate industry — for example, measuring carbon sequestration in nature with machine learning andAI, a concept that was “literally unimaginable 5 years ago.”
Tom Steyer and Robinson Meyer.Sean Vranizan
As for the Trump-sized elephant in the room, Steyer encouraged climate tech startups to focus on “good leadership” as well as the willingness to adapt in this uncertain moment. “You’re gonna have hard times, and the world is going to change, and you’re going to have to figure out what to do,“ he said. Steyer also noted that all Americans, not only those working in climate tech, should understand the energy transition as a background condition of their careers. “If you want to be a screenwriter (...) be a screenwriter. But it’s really important that you put [the energy transition] into your screenwriting. If you‘re a banker (...) be a banker with an awareness of this issue. Bank the good stuff, not the bad stuff,” Steyer explained. He finished up the discussion with a remembrance of the late Pope Francis, a “tremendous human being for the planet.”
Sam D'Amico and Nico Lauricella.Sean Vranizan
Also on Thursday was a lightning talk between Nico Lauricella, Heatmap’s CEO and editor in chief, and Sam D’Amico, the founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, which sponsored the event. D'Amico explained that in addition to being an induction stove, Impulse’s Cooktop is “a way to get battery storage into people's homes” — a “concept car” for using batteries in appliances to create a more decentralized grid. Lauricella and D’Amico also discussed the impacts of Trump’s tariffs on clean tech companies like Impulse, with D’Amico advising other founders in the room to build prototypes based on the supply chain and to make sure they have options in terms of where their products are manufactured so they can keep up with changing trade policies.
Impulse's high-power Cooktop on display at the event.Sean Vranizan
Lastly, Heatmap News staff writer Katie Brigham hosted a panel with Gabriel Kra, managing director and co-founder at Prelude Ventures, Clea Kolster, partner and head of science at Lowercarbon Capital, and Rajesh Swaminathan, partner at Khosla Ventures. The group spoke about the unique circumstances facing investors in the climate technology space, what their firms are looking for when investing in the newest climate innovations, and how AI fits into the picture.
Katie Brigham, Clea Kolster, Gabriel Kra, and Rajesh Swaminathan.Sean Vranizan
All three panelists acknowledged that it’s a delicate time for clean tech investors and companies alike. “Volatility and uncertainty are the enemies of running and planning a business,” warned Kra. The true cost of the tariffs is therefore extremely high, Kra explained. Kolster agreed that things are generally gloomy in the investment space, but also highlighted the technologies that are currently thriving. Carbon removal, she pointed out, “is going better than ever. Contracts are being inked right now, in the past few weeks.” The companies and technologies she’s excited about, Kolster added, are building “cheaper, better, faster,” as Steyer pointed out earlier in the evening.
Swaminathan added that there will always be a certain element of risk when it comes to investing in emerging technologies. “Clean tech companies have so many single points of failure,” he said. “And you have to prop up each part with the right leadership team. You have to have strong pillars so that [your company] doesn’t break.”
Guests following the discussion.Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Sean Vranizan
Guests at SFCW
Sean Vranizan
Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Impulse, as well as our supporting sponsor, V2 Communications, and our event host, IndieBio.